Darkness Saves Her
by butterflybaby91
Summary: He was not Marius. He did not stand for anything good; he was not nice to her. He did not care about her, so she could not imagine what he thought he was doing in stalking her.


"Where are you going dressed like _that_?" he asks her scathingly, eyeing her stolen suit of men's clothing with disdain.

She sighs and brushes past him, floating out of the flat, "None of your business-leave me alone," she bites back, annoyed and hurrying away, but he has other ideas.

He grabs her arm causing her to stop short and she turns to glare at him, but when she meets his eye, instead of the mocking sneer he usually sports when he addressing her, his face is impassive, almost fearful as he tightly grips her arm in a way that she knew would leave bruises, "I asked you a question," he sneers, squeezing her wrist until she lets out a yelp, "Where are you going? Because if you're going to go get yourself killed along with that pretty boy you always follow around, excuse me, but it is my business."

She smirks and looks at him balefully, "It's really not your business what I do with my life," she tells him quietly, "Just because I sometimes succumb to sharing your bed," she trails off and finally succeeds in getting away from him, "Anyways, if I don't die with him, you'll probably end up killing me in time as you always threaten," and with that she runs away, leaving Montparnasse standing there staring mutely after her, trying to remove the empty look he had worn as she left from her mind—she has a barricade to get to.

She sees him following her, when she goes to take Marius' letter to Cosette, but she ignores him. She is about to die with the love of her life—she does not really want to think about the other man, who actually knows she exists, not matter how reluctantly he usually acknowledges her presence. He had always been there—always lurking, hanging around her father, and in his free time alternating with threatening her and trying to coerce her into his bed. But he was _not_ Marius. He did not stand for anything good; he was not nice to her. He did not care about her, so she could not imagine what he thought he was doing in stalking her.

He intercepts her as she is about to head back onto the street where the barricade has been erected. He grabs her for the second time that evening, "What do you think you are doing?" she spits, trying to get away, but he manages to get an arm around her waist.

"You're not going back there," he tells her, matter-of-factly, as he begins to drag her down an alley and away from her imminent death.

She begins to struggle, kicking and pulling at his arms, before finally letting her body go limp, but her dead weight is not enough to deter his plan of carrying her off, but he does swing her up and over his shoulder after a moment of dragging her.

"Why do you care whether or not I die?" she mutters into his back as the blood begins rushing to her head.

She feels him freeze under her and he drops her to the ground. Thinking he realized that he _doesn't_ care, she stands and begins to straighten her clothes.

Next thing she knows, she is pressed up against the harsh brick wall and she gasps as his hard body presses into her frail frame, "Why do you think I wouldn't care if you threw your life away?" he asks, voice deathly quiet as he studies her face.

She splutters, shaking her head, thrown off by the intensity of his question. When she does not answer right away, he grips the back of her neck and forces her lips to meet his in a bruising kiss. They have done this before—it is never gentle or loving, not like how she had always imagined kissing Marius might be—but this kiss is different. It has some subtle hint of desperation in it and she responds to that, twisting her hands in his hair and pulling _hard_, not wanting to lose whatever has made this kiss different. He moans, deep in his throat and his nails scrap at the base of her scalp.

"Eponine," he groans when she lifts her body off the wall to press more firmly into his, "Eponine," he growls again and suddenly breaks the kiss, forcing her shoulders back toward the wall and forcibly holding her in place as he stares her down. His eyes are dark, hair messier than he likes it to be, lips swollen from hers, but he just stares angrily at her. She is not afraid—she is never afraid, not of him, not of anything—but she is confused.

"You're not throwing your life away," he informs her, "Come on we're going back to my place," he says, not waiting for her assent, before he has an arm firmly around her waist, drawing her into his side, in an embrace that is controlling and at the same time tender and she finds that she does not want to pull away anymore.

When they enter his flat, he throws her on the bed and hurriedly begins taking his jacket off. She just watches him, unsure of what he wants from her. If he only wants to bed her once more before she dies, then she thinks she can probably get away once he is asleep and still meet Marius at the barricade.

As he is untying his cravat, he notices her sitting there unmoving, "Well, are you going to take off those ridiculous clothes or not?" he crinkles his nose, "If you're going to dress like a boy you could at least be less dirty about it."

She glares at him, but begins taking her own jacket off, "I'm leaving as soon as we're done with this," she tells him, unable to not be impertinent. He pauses in his undressing, shirt hanging off his shoulders, displaying the pale expanse of his stomach and the dark hair running over the skin of his lower abdomen.

"No you're not," he says simply, "I'm not letting you out of here until that barricade is gone."

The confusion at his words overwhelms her and she whirls on him, banging her fists into his chest, "What do you want from me!" she shrieks, "Just let me be—you can get any grisette to sleep with you. You don't need to keep me from Marius just for sex!"

He gives her a strange look and securely grabs her wrists in his, holding them together and grazing his thumb over the soft skin on the inside of her arm, "Don't you see?" he asks, "I don't want just any grisette," he pauses and solidly meets her eye, "I want you."

She stares back dumbfounded, finally understanding, "Oh," she breathes and he releases her, pushing his shirt off and completely undressing, before seeing to her. He undresses her and guides her back to the bed pushing her back until she topples over on to the mattress and then he is on top of her, lips connecting, hands gripping each other frantically, trying to hold what they almost lost.

That desperation is still there, but it has dulled in the safety of his flat. He is more gentle with her, throughout, than he usually is, maintaining eye contact the whole time he is inside of her, calling out her name, and kissing her fondly when they are done. He even lets her sleep in his bed, fastening his arms around her to anchor her to his bed and him and to make sure she remains firmly in the land of the living. It is nice, but the restraint no longer necessary-in light of his recent revelation she has lost her interest in dying.

Things between them do not change quickly. After the night of the failed uprising, they fall into bed together more frequently and with more rough kindness between them than they had previously. He threatens to kill her less and she taunts him with more teasing than before.

But, besides for his one brief admission on the night he saved her life, they do not talk about how they regarded each other. However, ever so slowly, those feelings that had lay dormant for years, buried under the grime and stress of poverty and destitution, begin to blossom.

What she feels for him was not what she had felt for Marius—a boy she had idolized, barely known, and one who she barely thought about now—these feelings are grittier and more grounded. She knows who he is and she knows he has few virtues, his entire being, being comprised mostly of faults, but she finds she does not care. He makes her heart race and keeps her on her toes. He still treats her brutally, but it is a violence that is tinged with kisses and embraces at the end of the day.

She knows they will never have a happy ever after like in the stories her mother had read to her as a child. They will never marry or completely settle down—they both are too wild for that. But, just because they will not have a happy ending does not mean they cannot be _happy_. And Eponine finds that she is—happy, that is. She finds happiness in the thrill she has begun to feel whenever she finds him lurking in the shadows as she goes about her day. She finds happiness in his lips and hands, rough, bruising upon her body, staining her skin, marking her as his. She finds happiness in the way they come together, joined as one, and the look he gives her through sleepy eyes as he falls asleep at night. It is not the life she had dreamed about, but dreams and reality hardly ever mesh and she finds that her reality is more vivid than her dreams ever could hope to be.


End file.
